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SO, THE SECOND-QUARTER EARNINGS SEASON IS FINALLY OVER. And it fittingly ended Thursday night with results from
Dell
(ticker: DELL) that nicely illustrated many of the troubles that now afflict the technology sector.

Dell offered both good news and bad news. The nice surprise came at the top line: Revenues of $16.4 billion in the July quarter beat the Street consensus by $500 million. But the upside came at a significant price. Gross margins fell to 17.2% from 18.4% in the May quarter and 20% a year earlier. While the company cut its operating expenses to their lowest level in six quarters, the impressive revenue growth was a result of aggressive pricing, particularly in Europe.

Dell didn't provide specific forward guidance, but it did say that it will continue to incur costs to realign its business. More significantly, it is seeing "continued conservatism in IT spending" in the U.S., Europe and several countries in Asia. The mention of Asia in that sentence is a new wrinkle: The slowdown is clearly spreading.

The company promises to continue cutting costs, and it vows a raft of new products in the weeks and months ahead. But ultimately, Dell faces an increasingly conservative IT spending environment and struggling consumers; the biggest growth opportunities are in emerging economies where price competition is fierce. And consider this: At the company's global consumer business, revenue rose 28%; unit sales jumped 53%, and market share climbed by 1.6 percentage points, to 9.1%. But that unit somehow still had zero profits in the quarter.

So, while Dell has diversified into servers, storage, services and other areas, and is making admirable progress in cutting costs, it's still dominated by the fiercely competitive PC business. Dell's turnaround continues, but as Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope wrote in discussing the results late last week, "the company has clearly taken a step backward."

For well over a month now, I have been walking around with two smartphones: hanging off my belt, my trusty, battered,
Research In Motion
(RIMM) 8700c, and in my left front pocket, a sleek, shiny 3G
Appleaapl 1.8150196218337495%Apple Inc.U.S.: NasdaqUSD114.155
2.0351.8150196218337495%
/Date(1481308047281-0600)/
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
19572758
P/E Ratio
13.814993954050786Market Cap
597858946891.729
Dividend Yield
1.9956236323851204% Rev. per Employee
1846780More quote details and news »aaplinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
(AAPL) iPhone. I wanted to understand the lure of the iPhone and figure out whether I was ready to leave my stubby BlackBerry behind for the promised land.

Let me say right up front, the iPhone really is in many ways the best mobile device I've ever used. Calling it a phone does it a disservice; it's more like a pocket Mac. It's less phone than computer. Indeed, what makes the device so remarkable is its flexibility. You can download hundreds of applications from the iTunes App Store. Throughout the weeks that I have been experimenting with the iPhone, I've had to wrest it from the hands of my tech-savvy kids, who downloaded free apps by the dozen, some silly -- the iPhone as a flashlight, or the virtual light saber -- and some simply delightful. (I particularly liked Midomi, a Web-connected application that can identify songs by simply having you hum them into the phone. Amazing.) Indeed, the iPhone is simply more fun, by a wide margin, than any other phone I've come across. And it does myriad things that my aging BlackBerry can't. It plays songs and videos. It takes pictures. It has built-in GPS navigation. You can access Wi-Fi networks. And you can surf the Web at reasonable speeds.

I nonetheless have to report that I can't quite bring myself to give up my BlackBerry. Let me tell you why.

For starters, the iPhone simply doesn't feel quite reliable enough as a corporate e-mail device. It actually took me close to a month to simply set up access on the phone to the Dow Jones Exchange Server. It didn't help that the company's IT staffers had little experience with the phone; they knew I had been suffering from some kind of glitch, but had no real idea of what it was. So I defaulted to the extreme option, erasing all the data and starting over.

Two in a Row: The Nasdaq climbed for a second straight month with a 1.8% August gain. But it slid 2% last week, hurt by Dell's disappointing earnings.

Once I finally got e-mail going, things improved. The e-mail client on the iPhone is in many ways better than the BlackBerry's. For one thing, deleting messages on the iPhone actually deletes them from Exchange, which is not the way Dow Jones has configured my BlackBerry. For another, it handles attachments more smoothly; opening Word documents on my BlackBerry often results in a blur of text that removes all the spaces between words. (Try editing a 1,200-word column with all the spaces removed on a BlackBerry-sized screen.) It's also useful that the iPhone mail client provides a short preview of each message, which the BlackBerry doesn't.

However, I've also endured long, inexplicable periods when I simply stop receiving e-mail; not so with the BlackBerry unless the server goes down. Given how much I rely on mobile e-mail, that's not a good thing. I've also experienced highly variable and inconsistent 3G access; about half of the time at my desk in the Dow Jones offices in Palo Alto, I get 3G access; the other half of the time it flips over to EDGE. I also prefer a real keyboard to the virtual version on the iPhone, though that alone wouldn't deter me from using the iPhone as my primary mobile device.

The overarching issue for me is battery life. If I charge the iPhone overnight, I can't get much past lunch before it runs out of juice. If I'm actually out and about -- if I'm mobile, which after all is when you really want a mobile phone -- I must jump through hoops if I want to get through an entire day without its going dead.

Since I haven't been relying on the iPhone as my primary mobile phone -- that's still my BlackBerry's job -- I've taken to simply shutting it off when I don't need it. Of course, that makes it a lot less useful as an e-mail device, and requires the phone to catch up on e-mail once I turn it back on. My BlackBerry can get through several days on a single charge.

The iPhone is a stunningly flexible device. But ultimately, I rely on my mobile device to remotely make calls and send and receive e-mail. I can't do those things on a device that is constantly in danger of running out of juice. And, yes, I know there are tricks for extending battery life -- shutting off 3G when you don't need it, or dimming the screen, or turning Wi-Fi off. But I don't want to be worrying about strategies for getting through the day without exhausting my battery.

I really do love the iPhone. It rocks. It's a truly awesome feat of engineering, a huge leap ahead. But until Apple figures out how to substantially improve the iPhone's battery life, I am sad to say, I simply don't feel comfortable relying on it as my primary mobile phone.

NOT EVERYONE CARES FOR THE TYPICAL TOUCHPAD or pointer stick on a laptop, but carrying a cordless mouse around when you're traveling or off to make a presentation can be cumbersome. Not only can batteries run out at the most awkward moment, but the dongle that captures the mouse's wireless signals usually sticks so far out of the notebook's USB slot that it can easily get broken.

Logitech's
logi -1.3636363636363635%Logitech International S.A.U.S.: NasdaqUSD23.87
-0.33-1.3636363636363635%
/Date(1481307998455-0600)/
Volume (Delayed 15m)
:
124387
P/E Ratio
24.61855670103093Market Cap
4187651941.16071
Dividend Yield
2.370189372884657% Rev. per Employee
355269More quote details and news »logiinYour ValueYour ChangeShort position
new V550 mouse solves both problems. First off, Logitech says you get 18 months -- yes, 18 months -- of use from two AA-batteries. In the interest of writing a timely review, I didn't test that claim, but Logitech swears that it's true. It's the result of new battery-saving technologies and a feature whereby the mouse is automatically turned off when you store it on a small button that sticks to your laptop.

Then there's the well-designed USB plug that you insert in a laptop slot to enable wireless connections. A fraction of the normal size, it is only three-quarters of an inch long and, when inserted, sticks out just one-quarter inch. That's small enough that you can easily leave it plugged in all the time without fear of damage, even when storing your laptop in a briefcase.

Logitech (ticker: LOGI) was a hot stock up until the end of last year, rising from 10 to 37 in three years. But since then the share price has fallen to 27, despite continuing strong double-digit growth in sales and operating profits. The Street may be wrong. Given the Swiss-based company's strong margins and record of innovation, the stock's potential may be anything but mousy.